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The idea of the discography section is fairly simple: detail all of Stephen's releases. The first page of this section details his solo albums, while the other pages explore the more obscure parts of his catalogue and musical history.
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Strange but true
On the net, the less "official" a discography is, the more accurate it tends to be. An "official" discography will usually concentrate on the key releases (ie. those that are not out-of-print and hence, can still generate revenue). On a "fan" website, accuracy is the aim so no stone is left unturned. |
The design of this page is pretty simple. Across the top we have a montage of the album covers. For those familiar with Stephen but new to the site, this is a neat way of summarising the releases so that the fan can quickly determine whether they've missed anything. For them, an unfamiliar album cover is likely to cause a serious bit of frowning ("huh? what's that one?").
Below this we have a table that offers more detail: the album title, the year of release, a brief blurb to describe the sound/style and then a quote from a press review. The blurbs are personally opinionated, which is partly a hangover from the days when this was purely a fan site. Now that the site has taken on an "official" status, I've decided to leave the blurbs because I think the personality they add to the site is more interesting than overboard gushing written by some PR guru armed with a thesaurus. The addition of the quote then serves to balance or reinforce my description.
Clicking on an album title or even one of the album covers in the montage will take the reader directly to a page that provides more details about that album. Each page looks something like this:
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The most prominent feature of this page is the album cover. While it helps the page avoid being one solid slab of text, I think actual album covers are absolutely essential inclusions in a discography. Why? Because if someone decides to purchase this album, having an idea of what the album cover looks like will help them spot it, whether they're staring at a wall display of "new releases" or flicking through a bargain bin. When album-hunting, the visual association can be more important than almost anything else. It's a shame that so few music magazines reproduce the album artwork (although this is partly caused by the long lead times required in magazine publishing).
Beside the cover we have the track listing, with each song title linking to the lyrics for that song. Directly below that I've then added some supplementary comments particular to this album.
In the centre of the page we have links to more information about the album. One is a link to the text of the original press release for the album while the other is a link to a set of press reviews for the album.
Below these links we have the recording credits for the album. Some music fans do pay attention to these details, as they may recognise names they've seen on other albums they enjoy. They might build up this knowledge and use it to steer themselves towards albums that also involve the same people. Alternatively, they might find it useful at the next trivia quiz down at the pub.
Under the page heading, you'll notice that I mention the record label and where possible, the catalogue number of the release. This might be useful to some people because it can help when trying to get the dodgy record store down the road to order the album for you.
Of course, the discography section doesn't stop at solo albums. If I had stopped here, I would have then received emails from people saying "did you know Stephen sang on blah-blah-blah by blah-blah?" At one point I may have decided that that was not interesting enough to add to the site but then visitors to the site would point it out to me, over and over again. In the end, publishing the information on the site was the best way of stopping that steady flow of emails.
The other main sections of the discography are tagged "singles" (listing Stephen's solo single releases), "Sports" (ie. the band which Stephen once fronted), "other appearances" (albums which Stephen has recorded on) and "other projects" (projects which somehow involved Stephen's work, perhaps without his direct involvement). Each of the sections is structured in a similar way to the "solo albums" page, drilling down to album cover artwork and track listings as required.
What's inconsistent about this section? Well, the first page lists the albums in reverse chronological order (ie. most recent at the top) but the other pages are sequenced in forward order. It's a little confusing and should be changed but I haven't got to it yet. :-)
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